The Herald reports that H Clark is to lead the fight against the loss of our “ancestral visa” privileged entry rights to Britain.

She should crawl there on bended knee, since she has spent 9 years extracting cheap praise from the trivial intellectuals who feel they look more “grown-up” when they reject their inheritance.

Strong families celebrate and foster their ties and mutual obligations. Of course they have their differences, but they focus on the rituals and celebrations that strengthen what they share.

We all know weak and troubled adults who cope with their inadequacy and insecurity by blaming their normal, even outstanding parents. Passionate denunciation of their parents’ values, interest, foibles etc is embarrassing to hear. There’s something repulsive about disloyal denunciation of an inheritance, even when its amusing.

But Clark and Co have it down to an art form. Lest we forget, we’ve weakened the emotional claims that have been the justification for our continuing “family” privileges with stunts like:

offering studied and childish insults to the Queen. Remember H Clark wearing trousers to a state dinner, and omitting the saying of grace even though the Queen is head of a state church, and was sitting at the same table as the heads of two of NZ’s churches;

More recent was the silence, or even quiet encouragement of media hostility over the absence of a royal representative at Sir Edmund Hillary’s funeral, when there is unrebutted rumour that the Queen was never invited.

ending our appeal rights to the Privy Council (at vast cost to ourselves);

excluding British Navy ships (as they also refused to confirm or deny nuclear status) and celebrating Lange’s dishonest speech in the UK (which was directly hostile the the UK position) when we tore up our ANZUS committment;

The UK government has no reason to thank us for our contribution to the pressures on Blair with our “non-aligned” foreign policy (setting aside our sensible approach to Iraq).

This theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The law change will apply to all Commonwealth countries, not just New Zealand. Hence one could argue that Australia, which under John Howard was fiercely loyal to the Crown, and built a strong defence relationship with the UK, is being punished. That of course would be nonsense, as is the theory above.

paul scott

March 10th, 2008

6:17 pm

dude, for me to get to the UK just got very difficult indeed, even among my collection of ancestral deeds and things,to get an Ancestral Visa these UK people want actual original proof of grand parent birth and so on,
that is unless you are under thirty where most of the terorrists are

Lewis
I did not say they were punishing us – merely that we have sacrificed our trump, the view that we are extraordinarily loyal friends and relatives, the relationship that gave us far more than the Aussies when the UK joined the EU (under its former name).
Aussie has since the second world war been seen as the larrikin relative.
For an example beyond excellence of parlaying relationships and emotional claims into tangible costly support, look at what sustains Israel’s independence, indeed existence, against the overt interests of the US.

Steven, you can’t call it a “trump” if everyone else -i.e. the Australians, Canadians, Jamaicans, etc, are losing the same ancestry visas and other entry privileges. The fact remains that Australia has not done any of the things noted above, and yet will lose the same rights as us. Your assertion is baseless.

Oh, and our better access to the EEC (as it then was) was due to Jack Marshall doing a good job negotiating in Brussels. And the fact Australia wasn’t as badly affected as we were by Britain’s membership – they just sold their ore to the Japanese and wheat to the Americans. If Britain really wanted to reward its former colonies for their loyalty, Edward Heath never would’ve joined the EEC in the first place.

George

March 11th, 2008

10:51 pm

It is not just the Brits who could be forgiven if they had a memory of the studied slights they have endured. The Labour Party has crapped in NZ’s own hat everywhere. Viz Korea when it went through its corporate economic meltdown, the first airline to pull the plug was Air NZ. They haven’t forgotten that.
Then the numerous cases of anti-American cant. Not well remembered here was the case where the PM, one W. Rowling, directly had a hand in tipping up a resident US citizen and his Te Anau lodge. [See Rowling v Takaro Properties, Privy Council] He left his enterprise and the this country, broke and in disgust. When he died, a few years back, he was then the President Elect of one of the most exclusive and influential groupings in the USA, the Bohemian Club. The same members of which the NZ government despatches fresh flights of flunkies to snivel for a free trade deal. A real Tui moment, when you think of it. You put our mate on the street, and you want…. what???